Tag Archives: Ballet

Dance Camps

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This summer the kids (especially Mayci) spent lots of time at dance camps (plus a sports camp for Zeke). They all had a great time and it helped break up our days.

Mayci started the summer with princess camp. One day her teacher even came in dressed as Belle ready for the ball. That was an exciting day for all the girls.

Mayci, Nicky, Noah, and Joel did a ballet and jazz camp. The boys were kind of crazy but they had tons of fun. One day we went to pick them up and Joel was sound asleep, totally worn out by all the activity.

Mayci’s next adventure was Encanto camp. They danced to We Don’t Talk About Bruno. She had a ball at that one. After all, she absolutely loves Encanto!

Zeke did a two day Disney sing-a-long camp and then did musical theater camp. He really enjoyed being on stage when he did the acting class at school, but add in singing and dancing and that’s his idea of heaven (he loved it so much he’s taking musical theater at the dance studio this year).

Mayci and Anthony took acro camp where they both enjoyed dancing and flipping and stretching. Mayci was made for acro with how bendy she is (she’ll be taking acro class this year).

Ballet camp is where Mayci discovered not only does she enjoy doing ballet, she is good at it. Anthony, who had never taken ballet at all before this camp, learned so much including the correct terms for some of the moves. Mayci was disappointed to discover she’s too young still for a ballet-only class, but that’s okay. She’s taking a ballet/tap combo and a ballet/jazz combo this year so between the two of them it’ll be like she’s getting a whole ballet class after all.

The last week of summer all four of the older little ones went to camp. Anthony and Nicholas took hip hop. My new favorite thing is little kids hip hop dancing. So of course Anthony will be taking hip hop this year.

While Anthony and Nicholas were doing hip hop, Zeke and Mayci were doing ballet and tap. Zeke loves tap (so of course he’s taking ballet/tap with Mayci this year).

This summer of dancing ended in Mayci winning a spot on the competition team and us picking out classes that will put at least one kid at the studio five days a week. Apparently dance is our life now.

The Ballet Boy

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Zeke has started weekly dance classes. He’s taking a combo tap and ballet class. He absolutely comes alive in that studio.

They start out wearing their tap shoes. Zeke loves the sound they make as he walks. He is so excited that he canmake his taps sound different based on how he moves his feet.

He does so well copying the arm motions his teacher makes. He focuses so well the whole entire hour. He just really loves it so much.

He is the only boy in his class. I told him we need to dig up a clip of Dule Hill as The Tap Dance Kid. Zeke said, “Who is the ballet boy?” I said I didn’t know. He said, “It’s me! I’m the ballet boy!”

About halfway through the class they switch to their ballet shoes and do some stretching and toe pointing and flexing and work on graceful hand movements.

The first class the teacher had each child do a ballet spin on one foot. Zeke is the only one to successfully make it all the way around so she had him take a bow.

The last few minutes of class are dedicated to creative movement. They do some skipping and dancing and just basically have lots of fun. The smile on Zeke’s face after class is just radiant. Dance is totally his thing right now!